Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Communication technologies have facilitated workers' ability to integrate the home and work domains; however, these tools have also allowed each domain to more frequently intrude into the other. We examined workplace policies and norms, individual preferences, and family norms and expectations as antecedents of connectivity behaviors that utilize communication technologies to bridge the boundaries between home and work. The control of interruptions from communication technology was examined as a moderator of the relationship between connectivity behavior and work-family conflict. Data were gathered from employees of two universities (n = 290). We found that being required to be connected after hours and role integration preference were associated with higher levels of connectivity behaviors. Connectivity behaviors were not associated with work-family conflict, nor was there support was for the proposed moderator. Job type and hours worked after hours were significantly associated with both connectivity behavior and work-family conflict.
Keywords: communication technology, work-home boundaries, workplace norms
Introduction
The introduction of the Internet, along with changes in communication technologies such as the increased use of cell phones, and personal data assistants (PDAs), have radically changed the ways that workers connect with both their jobs and their families. These devices have allowed work to be conducted outside of traditional office settings and outside of traditional work hours. This flexibility and change in connectedness has many, often contradictory, implications for workers' ability to balance work and personal life. On one hand, the fact that workers may more easily work from home and after hours may lessen work to family conflict (WFC), the extent to which the demands of the workplace are incompatible with family life (e.g. Greenhaus and Beutell,1985). For example, a worker may work in the evening after taking time out from the work day to attend a child's school play, work from home while waiting for home repairs, or routinely work from home in the afternoons after the end of a child's school day. Thus, the Internet and new communication technologies may greatly facilitate a worker's ability to balance work and their personal life.
Paradoxically, however, connectedness may increase WFC as work can intrude into the home domain even more. Organizations may expect workers to be constantly connected to work even in jobs which traditionally have...